Adult learning is more than alternative education, self-help, self-study, or training. Self-directed inquiry can free you from the cultural traps of today’s postmodern world. When you think for yourself, you take control of your life. Intellectual ability and critical thinking soon become substitutes for paper credentials. Simply stated aggressive learning is the most practical guide to a passionately rewarding life.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

A primary function of the
human brain is to record an accurate snapshot of reality so as to improve the
odds that the rest of the organism will have an opportunity to reproduce. Our
brains work 24/7 to keep us safe from danger and free from surprise and
embarrassment. Although genetics research suggests our species may be
continuing to evolve, we have the same physical hardware that we had when we
were on the menu of large predators. Because surprise can spell danger, our
brains are hyperaware, still making lightning-fast assumptions based on very
little information.

These days most of us no
longer have to worry that the snapping of a twig means we are about to be
pounced upon by a hungry beast. But our brains still mimic paranoia in their
need to nail reality quickly. A mistaken assumption about an approaching
stranger or a new hire at our business can prove costly. The stranger might be
a mugger and the new employee might be a thief.

In a nutshell, we all
have biases about all sorts of subjects and circumstances, and it’s a good
thing because we couldn’t live without them. We rely on having an enormous
record of seemingly accurate snap-judgment assumptions archived beneath our consciousness
and available instantaneously, convictions about every possible kind of cause
and effect, especially about people: how they behave, who can be believed and trusted,
who can’t and why. For our sentinel awareness, our observations seem to represent
straight-up reality. In other words, that’s how it looks and how it seems, so
that’s how it must be.

As we grow up, our brains
pay careful attention to millions of things deemed significant but unworthy of being
called into our conscious awareness. Just because we aren’t knowingly aware of
everything going on around us, however, doesn’t for a minute mean that our gray
matter is not focused on keeping meticulous records of anything and everything that
might prove helpful in the future.

Bias can be positive or
negative and as simple as if you see
that, it means this. So, if we are raised in a culture where a demonstrable
negative bias directed toward a minority is a common experience, if the bias
expressed stigmatizes the minority as being lawbreakers or untrustworthy in
general, the brain is keeping this as a deep-seated record for reference to
avoid unsatisfactory encounters in the future.

If when we are children the
adults in our presence bear a racial prejudice toward a minority, even if they
try to hide it, we will read their body language. We will record the looks on
their faces, their eye-rolling gestures,
the tone of their remarks. We will internalize the imprint of a social bias when
the adults think we aren’t paying attention to their tacitly shared assumptions
about stereotypes.

Our brains strive persistently
to read our peripheral social interactions, soaking up sentiment as effectively
as dry sponges absorb water. Internalization of the culture we observe as
children is confirmed by research studies in which young black children show a more
positive attitude toward white dolls than black dolls. Their views have been ever
so subtly formed by internalizing the prevalent bias of media and their social
environment.

Regardless of our
conscious opinions about equality and justice, most of us will feel an
intuitive tug toward our internalized record of life experience when confronted
with the need to make a decision. If we’re interviewing applicants for
employment, for example, or asked to approve of a person who wants to date our son,
daughter, or other family member, our subconscious take on reality will likely weigh
heavily in our decision making.

We are all masters of a form
of rationalizationreferred to in
academia as confirmation bias. If the
family member’s potential date is of the wrong ethnicity or social class according
to our internal database, but saying as much would be considered publically
offensive, no problem. We can easily come up with ingenious alternative reasons
to show why this person is still not suitable. Racial bias becomes especially suspect
when we come down hard on a reason for disqualification with more aggressive
emphasis than we would apply in similar situations with persons of our own
ethnicity or social status.

Our unconscious emotional
self is so formidable that psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant
to capture its dominant nature. The rider on the elephant represents the
relatively limited power of our conscious reasoning self in comparison. When in conversation or reading text,
recall how quickly your elephant is apt to jump to conclusions that amount to
instantaneous emotional validation before you’ve had a chance to fully digest
the subject at hand. Our elephant never sleeps.

Unfortunately we pay too
much attention to formal education and too little to the experiential learning
that shapes our worldview for life. If we are oblivious to the subtle nature of
bias, then our elephant rules. Whatever we come up with as a rationale,
regardless of how prejudicial our judgment might be, we will still perceive
ourselves as being completely fair and impartial, even as our bias masquerading
as intuition will causeus to offer cautious
rationalizations that carefully conceal our deepest and most morally incorrect feelings.

Our justifications may
very well result in our not hiring a minority applicant or not giving our
approval for someone to date a person we’ve subconsciously stigmatized, while
we still remain absolutely convinced of our total objectivity. There are
mountains of irrefutable employment data showing statistical proof of an
employment bias and of persistent racial profiling in law enforcement in
America that very few people who manage these processes will admit is occurring.

It is impractical and
counterproductive to ask people if they harbor a racial bias. We can’t expect
an honest answer because we don’t have direct access to the subconscious record
with its millions of bits of data any more than we have access to the neurological
programming that enables us to tell up from down, left from right, and hot from
cold.

Biased information based
on years of subtle observations will be fed to us consciously as intuitive
feelings or explicit knowledge, and these inclinations will require very few visible
or audible cues to enable us to instantaneously match and confirm our internalized
data, all the while maintaining that we don’t have a prejudiced bone in our
body.

Now, if the notion of
racial bias and negative stereotyping were not complicated enough, we also have
to contend with the fact that we human beings are a tribal species. We have an
innate sense of fairness which can easily translate to an aversion to people who
do not work to pull their own weight. We are always on the lookout for enemies
and cheaters. In a nutshell, we are evolutionarily rigged for an in-group
versus out-group worldview. Ironically, as anthropologist Jack Weatherford
points out, “The communications industry has retribalized the world.”

We seek the shelter of
group consensus, and our group identity is reinforced and reassured when we can
collectively identify those who qualify as being outsiders. A divisive delineation
of us and them is literally in our genes, and today’s exponential increase in
diversity makes us hyperaware of otherness.
The tribal instinct is how we construct an us,
while the ability to readily identify a them
helps us bond.

We are innately wary of outsiders
and strange customs, and yet, at the same time, we are profoundly social creatures,
eager to form groups based on similarities and appearances. People given
different colored hats on entering a room will show signs of bonding by color in
a matter of minutes. Just consider our propensity to take sides in professional
team sports, where the players aren’t even from the regions they represent.

My point is that all over
the country we have people swearing that racial prejudice is a thing of the
past, and yet we have myriad statistics that show racial bias is very much
alive and firmly established in the present. Everywhere people sincerely
believe that because they don’t harbor a conscious negative racial bias, they
obviously don’t have one.

Until we truly understand
the deep-seated nature of racial bias and the fact that it takes enormous
intellectual and emotional effort to overcome it, we are doomed to failed
social interactions and the resulting communal strife. One of life’s most underappreciated
and underutilized lessons is that, more often than not, things are not as they
appear, and we pay an enormous social price for not constantly heeding such wisdom.

I don’t know if a
lifetime of subconscious assumptions can ever be completely overwritten, but I
do know from personal experience that a strong effort to deconstruct one’s own racial
bias can be psychologically transforming. To me it’s clear that the future of
human relations depends upon a sincere effort to overcome our ignorant assumptions
based on our biological predispositions for misunderstanding one another.

It’s very important,
however, not to underestimate how much determination is required to objectively
understand the nature and debilitating social effects of racial prejudice. Moreover,
it’s crucial to understand that when children grow up internalizing prejudicial
views that are not successfully challenged, their bigotry can be prevalent and
socially corrosive for most of a century.

American demographics are
changing at the fastest pace in our history. In the near future, white Americans
will become a minority, and signs of discontent lamenting this reality are
already being heard. There is deep-seated irony in the fact that the overturned
tables of racial discrimination are making a truism of the old notion that what
goes around comes around.

If as a culture we were
resolve to wage war on ignorant assumptions and learn en masse what is already
well known about the nature of bias, we might have an opportunity to inspire
enough empathy and goodwill to set some of our negative tribalistic
inclinations aside, or at least mitigate them, long enough to behave
politically like enlightened adults. We could expand the membership of our tribe
without incurring so much angst.

You may have heard a
warning to senior citizens that if you had chicken pox as a child, then you
have a one-in-three chance of getting shingles. Similarly, if you internalized
a racial bias growing up, the odds are much higher that the bias still exists. Even
people dedicated to equal rights are often shocked to discover they still bear
a hidden bias.

Numerous psychological test
instruments in cyberspace can help you check to see whether you harbor a hidden
racial bias. Simply Google testing for
racial bias, consider the reputations of the psychologists who authored the
test, and proceed. Harvard University and the University of Virginia both offer
tests online. Many people report being able to detect their own hidden biases
as they answer the questions. This kind of experience can result in an enhanced
sense of mindfulness. The only thing you have to lose by taking such a test is
your illusions.

We have evidence that our
species has continued to evolve since our days as hunter-gatherers, and it’s
clear that nothing like our present society has ever existed. There is,
however, some similarity between our current situation and the period in which
the danger of being eaten alive was ever present. The threat today consists in
being under constant assault in, by, and through the media and electronic
communications that make our lives easier while simultaneously subjecting usto every conceivable kind of scam that
the criminals and cheaters in our midst can dream up.

Danger in a
cyber-mediated world simply replaces the snapping of a twig and the threat of
being eaten with the clicking of a communication device and chance of being
scammed.The level of distrust
generated by cybercrime aggravates our tribal tendencies for paranoia and bias
based on very little information.

In a world driven by hypermedia,
a viable future requires that we acknowledge our shortsighted tribalistic
dispositions and compensate with the intelligence required to put an end to the
curse of human conflict that has plagued us for eons because of egregious social
misperceptions and ignorant assumptions.

In other words, our
default neurological bias hardware requires an emotional and intellectual
software patch for dealing with unprecedented change. We’ll need to apply the
patch ourselves until evolution sees fit to adjust for our hypermediated
lifestyles, if we want to increase the likelihood that our species will
survive.